Parklife - 7/8th June - Heaton Park, Manchester

Parklife festival is a 2 day music festival held in Manchester, it is the first festival on the summer circuit for most of the performers, unlike most festivals nowadays there is no overnight camping. Parklife 2014 was set to be an incredible weekend from the first line up release, as it features some of the biggest, and most up and coming, artists of the time. Headliners this year were the big Snoop D O double G on the Saturday and indie sensations Foals closing the festival on the Sunday, the rest of the bill was filled with an eclectic mix of indie and dance acts across all 9 stages.

We arrived on the Saturday at about 1 o'clock and got straight through the wristband exchange (VIP tickets really paid off for this) instead of queuing for up to an hour just to get into the arena, apparently there were some problems with the 'early bird' tickets not being recognised, which is pretty disappointing due to the fact that these customers had bought their tickets months in advance only to have trouble getting in and the ticketing staff couldn't do anything about it on the door, they had to re-queue which personally I find very bad. We walked around the site with a beer, from the Real Ale Bar in the VIP section, just to see what was going on and then headed to the main stage to watch Bipolar Sunshine, who were great live and had quite a sizeable crowd for an act billed so early on, they had the crowd on their side and played a good set, however the weather was really against them. We then popped into the Now Wave tent to see the Bondax duo play a set full of chilled out bass and slow beats, the tent was full of a crowd who wanted to get away from the constant huge bass-line sounds and Bondax kept them satisfied the who set. Route 94 were the next act we saw, over at The Colonnade, the crowd were there for the chart topping 'My Love' and when it dropped they really got into it, however the rest of the set was very average. We managed to catch the majority of Foxes on the main stage, who had a great live presence and performed a fantastic version of Clarity, her huge dance hit with Zedd. On the Now Wave stage at this time was Cyril Hahn, who has done two of my favourite remixes ever, he performed a great set, similar to that of Bondax but with a few more of his own versions of songs, the crowd were really into him and he did not disappoint. Straight after that we wondered back to the main stage to catch Annie Mac, I am a huge Mac fan but her set at Parklife was incredibly average, the last few songs she dropped were all top of the charts and the audience happily danced and sang them back to her, but it was hardly special. In contrast the Rudimental performance after that was brilliant, they bring so much energy to the stage and having such great material makes them perfect for a festival main stage, the weather had picked up at this time and they got Heaton Park going, after a few sound issues and having to go off stage as the electrics cut out midsong, they pulled out their big tunes and the crowd rewarded them by evidently having a great time. We then headed to see Duke Dumont, via the Now Wave tent to catch a few tracks of A$AP Rocky, who was a last minute replacement for Kendrick Lamar who had to pull out of the festival, however it was not an issue, the tent was packed, and with reason as A$AP was on form, he belted out his album and his more popular tracks got the whole tent going. Duke Dumont in comparison was very relaxed and played a set full of steel drums and groovy beats, which was expected but was brilliant none the less. It was now time for Snoop to hit the main stage, I have seen him before and he is more a parody of himself than a serious performer, the man is ridiculous and I have to take him for what he is, which is great live! He played his standard set of gangster rap to a crowd of white kids with their hands in the air. He is a comedy genius, but I believe you are a fool if you take him seriously. A big feature of Parklife was the weather, a week before it was forecast to be thunder storms all weekend, which thankfully was not the case, however it rained pretty heavily all of Saturday until about 4 o'clock, the park was a state but didn't put anyone off from having a good time, the organisers did their best to keep the ground in a relatively okay state, but they were fighting a loosing battle, the biggest cheers of the day was when the sun came out.

Feeling a little hungover, very tired and achey all over Sunday arrived, we again arrived at about 1, having already got wristbands we were quickly in and had a burger in the VIP section, I cant discribe haw great this burger was, it was incredible, if you ever see a Solita van get the 'Once in a Lifetime'!

We saw Ella Eyre on the main stage, who did a collaboration with Rudimental on 'Waiting all Night' which got her known, she is soon to drop an EP which should be good as she has a really powerful voice and is fantastic live, obviously enjoying her performance. We went on to the otherside of the arena to catch a few songs from Pusha T, one of the GOOD Music bunch, who dropped New God Flow and Trouble on my Mind which got the crowd fired up, they were absolutely great live and had fans bouncing and chilled out lying on the hill, one to go and see if you're into that music. One of my highlights of the weekend was Clean Bandit, who were now on the main stage performing to a huge crowd, which was expected with Rather Be being the fasted selling single of 2014 so far, and Extraordinary currently being fourth in the charts, they smashed out an unbelievable set with their violins, steel drums and dancey synth sounds all getting the crowd behind them, it was a great set from a relatively new band and I look forward to seeing them again soon. We stayed on to see Warpaint, but they really were dismal, they had no stage presence and although the lead singer has a great voice, it just isn't suited to a big festival stage, so we left and had a sit down for a while before heading back to see Sam Smith, who's set started very slow and his backing band were drowning out his voice, however towards the end he picked it up with 3 of the biggest songs of the last year, Money on my Mind, La La La and Latch, which were incredible live. The crowd were happily singing along and getting into the music, but he had very little empathy with them and he was clearly loving being on stage, just he never really bonded with the audience. Having been a fan of the XX way before they dropped their first album I was expecting a great set from Jamie XX who was playing on the Sounds of the Near Future stage and that is what we got, he played a range of his remixes and other songs and the tent was loving his set. London Grammar, who's album I love, were a huge disappointment, much like Warpaint they are not good on a large festival stage, her voice doesn't hold well and their songs are not what you need when drunk in the sun in a field, the crowd were evidently quite bored. Next up were Bastille, who I have seen 4 times previously so expected great things, so did everyone else as they had easily the biggest crowd of the weekend. The first time I saw them was in a tiny festival tent at about 2 o'clock with 20 other people and Dan's voice was so nervous when talking to the crowd, however each time I have seen them he gets more and more confident and this enhances their performance, they have such a good repertoire of songs, with such a range of styles, they are a phenomenal live band, one of my favourite songs of all time is the Bastille and Ella Eyre version of No Angles, which they performed together live for the first time, another festival highlight for me, they also played some new material which sounded promising as we are due a second album in the near future I would imagine. They ended with Pompeii, their number one single which got the who of Heaton Park singing along and was quite a spectacle. We they popped over to see SBTRKT who performed next to a giant blue inflatable lizard, we saw his drop Wildfire which got the whole tent bouncing and was a great live set based of the few songs we saw. On the main stage Foals were due to come on, which they did about 20 minutes late to a huge cloud of smoke and a massive guitar intro, it was the only delay of the whole festival, apart from that all artists were on stage in good time which was good to see. Foals played to a much smaller crowd than many of the acts throughout the day, but all the people watching were into them, the American group played their hit My Number early in their set and it got the reaction it deserved from the audience. Across the park we saw Disclosure who were closing the stage they put together with a great live show as we are accustomed to when the brothers play live.

Overall the festival was great, the weather was awful but that didn't take away from the overall enjoyment from many of the revellers, and with such a strong line up I was always going to enjoy the weekend. The bar situation at Parklife was very frustrating, as they don't sell pints of lager, only small cans of Heineken, the only other beers offered with Desperatos or Strongbow, all three sold in cans which seems very strange at a music festival, especially when you buy bottled water they take the plastic tops off incase you throw them, but are happy to give you a potentially very heavy metal container. The only place you could buy a proper pint was the Real Ale bar in the VIP section which we luckily had access to. Apart from this, and the stewards having very little knowledge of where anything on the site was, it was a fairly well fun festival.